THIS SAILOR’S WALK WAS A SHORT ONE
UNION S T R E E T HOMES OPEN T H E I R DOORS F O R 51S T ANNUAL HOUSE TOUR
BY LAURA RASKIN INDEPENDENT WRITER

Terry Bradley stands at the foot of the original stairway in her 22 Union St. home. ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

In the utilitarian New England of the 1820s, no one was planting

invasive privet hedges and hydrangeas on the island and in 1998, Eva-Maria Tausig, a founding mem-ber of the Lightship Basket Museum, was insistent that nothing of the sort would be found in the garden sur-rounding the Union Street building of the same era.

On a recent early morning, already blazing enough to drive a redhead into the shade, Tausig sat in the now seven-year-old authentic 19th century garden with a baseball hat on with the words “Head Gardener.”

Mr. & Mrs. William Halsey’s home at 19 Union St. is one of six on the tour. ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

She was busy weeding and pruning in preparation for today’s 51st Annual House Tour, presented by the Nantucket Garden Club, of which Tausig is a member. This is the first year that the Lightship Baskets Museum’s garden will be part of the tour, which opens the doors of five Union Street homes for “A Sailor’s Walk.”

Tickets, for $40, are still available today at any of the houses or the museum, and the self-guided tour can be ambled in any order.

A longstanding Garden Club tradi-tion, the profits go to scholarships and local preservation and conservation foundations.

Unlike Orange Street, the home on the hill to ship captains from the whal-ing industry years of the late 1700s and early 1800s, Union Street was for the ship laborers – carpenters, black-smiths and other tradesmen. The prox-imity to the harbor only a block away made the area its own bedroom com-munity.

Although Union Street was the site of the house tour about 10 years ago, tour co-chairwoman Ginger Heard said that many new owners have since bought homes there and done careful restoration and redecoration, includ-ing her and her husband.

Besides the preserved interiors of the homes, the gardens at 19, 20, 22, 30 and 37 Union St. are also on view, where residents have attempted to fol-low Tausig’s vein in planting species native to the island.

Still recovering from Queen Anne’s War, fought between the English and French on American soil in the early 1700s, Nantucketers were more concerned with building houses and surviving than they were with the ornamental accoutrements to life, explained Tausig. As such, their gar-dens were the bearers of necessities.

China roses, called Old Blush, with their faint peachy scent, were used for flavoring and medication.

Tausig used the Lightship Museum’s original architectural plans and source material like Ann Leighton’s “Early American Gardens” to recreate a tanagram herb bed fertilized with eel-grass and the other 15 roses, witch hazel trees, rhubarb and Mullein.

“Old plants do better,” said Tausig. “There are enough hydrangeas on the island.”

Around the corner from the muse-um is 30 Union St., a circa 1804 house deeded from Ebenezer Drew to Gershom Drew (1749-1809), a black-smith. It is now the home of Mary and David S.J. Brown, retired CIA analyst and lawyer, respectively.

While the enormous lot behind the house dwarfs Mary Brown’s two Jack Russell terriers, Clancy and Maisie, she explains that its odd shape may have supported the cluster of sur-rounding houses as a place to share chickens, gardens and a trash heap.

She and her husband bought the house as a vacation home away from the heat of Washington, D.C. in 1997. They added a back wing to the other-wise modest late Colonial to be reflec-tive of its roots.

“The best part is being close to the workings of the harbor,” said Brown, who grew up in Seattle.

Brown did some research on Drew, the blacksmith, and found that he died in 1810 with an estate of $16,000. That included one-eighth ownership in two Nantucket whaling ships, the Perseveranda (a Catholic saint and Spanish virgin) and the Fame. Unfortunately for Drew, the Perseveranda returned to Nantucket after his death with a boatload of sperm oil.

On a tour through the house, Brown points out the original cooking fireplaces in the basement and ceiling beams that may have come from left-over ship wood. Wood paneling in the parlor and dining room is original and a bay in the dining room added in the late 19th century, was considered fancy.

Transoms above the doorways would have allowed light to pervade the otherwise dim rooms.

Research at the Nantucket Historical Association’s library shows that Brown’s neighbor, 32 Union St., was built after the Revolution for William Coffin and once occupied by Marjorie Mills, famed columnist of the Boston Herald. Coffin’s ropewalk would have run between 30 and 32 Union, said Brown.

While the houses on the tour are not palaces, Brown, also a member of the Garden Club, said that is not the point. Most visitors are interested in seeing something old, not necessarily grand.

Longtime troubadour Bill Schustik will sing the work songs of the whal-ing ship laborers in the garden at 20 Union St. during the tour. Schustik has been singing chanteys, the tradi-tional maritime songs of sailors, for 30 years, and grew up professionally on the island he calls the “center of his heart.” Schustik will play songs from the sailors’ and families’ points of view, accompanied by his guitar, banjo, dulcimer and concertina.

“I’m as close to the real thing as someone coming out of the grave,” he said. And he will be coming fresh off the real thing. He performs regularly on the Shenandoah, a 170-ton topsail schooner with no auxiliary power that sails from Martha’s Vineyard.

The 51st Annual House Tour, present-ed by the Nantucket Garden Club, is “A Sailor’s Walk on Historic Union Street,” today, Wednesday, Aug. 10, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. A tea and boutique will be held at 20 Union St. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased at 19, 20, 22, 30, 37 or 49

(Lightship Basket Museum) Union St. The tour can be done in any order. I